TRAMPOLINE COMPILATION 2

PREVENTING INJURIES IN SPORTS:

Hello Everyone,

Recently I have hurt my neck and got inspired to write up a little post on how to help prevent injuries and how to deal with them. This is a general idea of preventative action. Please know that not every injury can be prevented and or treated the same way.  With this being said however, there are ways to decrease the chance of injury and that is what this article is about.

I was trying a trick on the trampoline and over rotated a trick and landed on my head and rotated after taking full impact on my head to my stomach. As I landed on my head I heard a lot of muscle fibres snapping in my neck as it was forced to flex suddenly with 140lbs landing on it from 15 ft. I was able to get up after 2 minutes of resting wit nothing more than a sore neck because of one major reason. I had built up the muscles in my neck and back so well that the muscles were able to withstand the impact and prevent my neck from snapping like a twig. Any exercise physiologist, injury specialist, physiotherapist or any trainer that works with high level athletes knows the importance of muscle mass for injury prevention. The unfortunate part of it is that most trainers and athletes forget how crucial hypertrophy is on a regular basis to maintain a strong body that is ready for impact.

I notice that a lot of trainers will focus on hypertrophy during the pre competition season and as soon as the first competition comes along, hypertrophy takes a second to more specific types of training such as power, speed, technique etc.

In my opinion hypertrophy training should be at least 40-50% of a weekly conditioning program that is done alongside of sport specific drills or training. With my athletes in Competitive Trampoline I force them to do 30 minute of conditioning a day during their training sessions. I focus on simple compound movements and isometric holds.

The simplest way to remember the importance of hypertrophy training is by thinking about the reason why electronics are not open. Why are they all surrounded by a material? It is because this material takes the impact instead of the fragile circuits. Take this open circuit machine and wrap it in one layer of construction paper. Do you think that will take much load before the circuits get broken? Probably not. Now put a metal sheet around the circuits. Do you think that will protect the electronic or machine more? Probably yes.

Take the time to build up your athlete’s exterior shell. It will do wonders. For an example, where I train, there are a lot of injuries with ankles, knees, low back. I have never gotten injured more than a day in four years. I did gymnastics and continue to work out and condition regularly and I can see how helpful it is when I hear others complain about seemingly small injuries. Why wait till the athlete is injured to put them on a conditioning program to strengthen the already most likely permanently damaged tissue?

I know this seems very basic, but you would be surprised how many trainers completely forget about conditioning their athletes and properly building muscle mass to help prevent injury. I am not saying all injuries will be prevented but I can confidently say that the incidence of injury will decrease enormously.

Thank you

Greg 

BROWN FAT: A new form of fat loss?

Hello everyone I am making this article due to the fact I am researching it for a school project. I will copy and paste the links to the articles that relate to this blog post at the end of the post if you need verification or more explanation.

The basics:

There are two classified types of fat, white adipose tissue (WAT) and brown adipose tissue (BAT). WAT is associated with weight gain and energy storage. BAT is associated with thermoregulation meaning when the body is cold the BAT is activated and causes heat to be generated to warm up the body. Weight loss is achieved under this basic equation

Calories in < calories out

As long as the number of calories you take in regularly is less than the calories you burn off your body is losing weight. Researchers are in a constant battle trying to find a way to increase calorie expenditure with the least amount of exercise being performed. The new theory is that BAT can cause a lot of weight loss if it can be activated.

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

This process is very complicated but I will put it into easy to understand concepts. BAT  heats up the body by producing energy in the Electron Transport Chain. This process is one of the ways the body makes energy. (A link to more detail about the ETC is below). This process simply creates energy by transferring electrons across a proton gradient which creates energy for the body. The theorized reason why the BAT uses so much energy but does not produce very much effect is because the ETC allows hydrogen’s to leak back through the proton gradient in the wrong direction. This means the cells are working very hard but still not producing as much of an effect as if there was no leak. The easiest way to look at it is like this:

If you are stacking pennies one by one and your friend comes and takes one penny away every time you stake 3 pennies. You are always taking a step back and you are forced to stack 133 pennies to get 100 pennies stacked because your friend keeps making you have to redo previously done work.

So when the BAT is activated the body is working harder to produce same results so you burn off more calories.  If you want to lose weight studies show that you need to increase the amount of BAT you have and activate it more.

HOW DO I ACTIVATE MY BAT?

Some studies show that if a person is exposed to a cold climate then the BAT is activated at an increased rate compared to a warm environment. There have been studies done on mice that show they lost the equivalent of 9lbs a year due to simply activating the BAT. Some people say to put your feet in cold water before a workout and that will cause the body to activate the BAT. Research also shows that woman have more or are able to activate more BAT then men can. We do not really know why except for some enzyme activity is slightly different. These theories are mostly speculations.

CONCLUSION:

BAT weight Loss is not a proven treatment for obesity; it is simply an idea that is being researched.  If someone can understand how the ETC allows hydrogens to leak back through then it may be applied to WAT. If this can happen then a functional weight loss technique may be created because then people would increase their resting metabolic rate. If someone can figure out how to uncouple (allow hydrogens to leak through) the ETC then obesity may not even exist anymore.

This article is not meant to give insights and facts, it is meant as a thought provoking post. If you are curious about BAT and its weight loss functionality then check out these links below.

Thank youJ

http://www.jlr.org/content/34/7/1057.short - article ( free full txt)

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1890175,00.html – review article

http://www.jbc.org/content/278/35/33370.full article ( free full txt)